By Nergis Demirkaya
In football, the transfer window closed Sept. 4. But in politics, it remains wide open as the AKP presses on with a campaign of seduction and coercion unprecedented in Turkish political history.
The changes in the parliament formed after the 2023 election and in the control of municipalities since the local elections of 2024 offer us growing evidence of how the ruling party sees winning over rivals as a policy area as central as economics, foreign affairs, or education.
A CHP mayor welcoming President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to Muğla said, 'Welcome to our Marmaris — is there anything we can do for you?'
The lightning reply from the head of state was: 'Our door is open, if you want to come through it.'
EVERYTHING FOR 360
To understand the AKP's 'transfer policy,' start with parliament. In the 600-seat assembly, 18 MPs have switched to the AKP since the 2023 general election. The party frames these transfers as proof that 'after 25 years in power, we remain a center of gravity — we are the place for those who want stability and genuine service.' That's the official line. But there's no shortage of claims about who brokered these transfers, and what was promised.
It's no secret what's behind this campaign: President Erdoğan needs parliament to call an early election so he can run again, and that requires 360 votes. Combined with the transfers, the votes of the AKP, MHP, HÜDA-PAR and DSP now total 331 — 29 MPs short of 360. Since the earliest an election could be held is November 2027, there's still time for further transfers.
MUNICIPALITIES CHANGE HANDS
The benefits to the party of the mayoral transfers that have picked up in recent months are too numerous to list. They give the AKP a way to reach citizens directly — from aid for the poor to daycare for working mothers. Such municipal services add to the strength of whoever is seen to deliver them. On top of that, municipalities also play a role in financing politics, creating jobs, and handing leverage through tenders to capital circles close to whoever is in charge. A win-win.
Municipalities were also behind the AKP's own story of growth and putting down political roots — it’s worth recalling that President Erdoğan's star rose after he was elected mayor of Istanbul's metropolitan municipality.
The AKP dominated local government until the 2019 local elections. But over the last two vote cycles it began losing control of municipalities it had run for years, starting with Istanbul and Ankara. The 2024 local election results have CHP in control of municipalities serving roughly 65% of Turkey's population — a share that gives the opposition a genuine base of power.
The AKP regards municipalities as just as important as the central government. No longer able to win them at the ballot box, the party found another way to take them. In the words of opposition figures, it became possible to win at the negotiating table instead, through state power, an instrumentalized judiciary, threats and blackmail. The AKP's municipal transfer policy first took hold in smaller parties' municipalities: of the roughly 60 municipalities won by the Yeniden Refah Party in 2024, more than 30 quickly passed to the AKP.
BIGGER FISH
While those transfers happened quietly, the policy entered a new phase on March 19 with operations against CHP-run municipalities. Some of the arrested mayors presided over councils where the AKP already held a majority — Bayrampaşa and Gaziosmanpaşa in Istanbul were the first CHP municipalities to change hands this way. As the operations spread, transfers accelerated. In the words of Yeni Party Chair Özgür Özel, numerous mayors became AKP members under the blackmail of 'either join us, or go to prison.' Among them were 40-year CHP members such as Aydın Mayor Özlem Çerçioğlu and Afyon Mayor Burcu Köksal, alongside mayors of Ankara districts such as Gölbaşı and Keçiören — long known for their conservative-right leanings and who had only joined the CHP shortly before the last election.
Since the March 31, 2024 elections, roughly 30 CHP municipalities have passed to the AKP — one metropolitan, one provincial, nearly 20 district and several town municipalities. Adding municipalities that changed hands from other parties, the total number of opposition municipalities lost to the AKP is approaching 100.
According to opposition politicians, the most recent case — Üsküdar — marks the high point of this transfer policy. To win over a municipality where the opposition held the majority, first the mayor and several council members were arrested. Then the gap was closed through transfers allegedly secured with various promises. Having once run Üsküdar for 30 years, the AKP won it back this time through engineering at the negotiating table — in just 30 days.
Both CHP and Yeni Party officials fear the same method will now be applied elsewhere. There's a view that the party's fragmentation will make the blackmail and threats even more effective, since the party strength behind pressured mayors has weakened. It's even said the AKP has council-member lists in hand, calculating which municipalities it can take and how — with Istanbul's metropolitan municipality, prized for its budget, reportedly at the top of that list.
Of Istanbul's 180 CHP council members, 14 mayors — including Ekrem İmamoğlu — are currently jailed pending trial, along with roughly as many council members. The CHP's council membership has fallen to about 155. That means if just eight to ten council members switch sides, an AKP candidate could win the Istanbul mayoralty — a scenario that could unfold quickly if İmamoğlu’s ban from politics in the 'fool's case' is upheld by the Court of Cassation.
Such a scenario could look like a major win by the government's short-term calculus. But what is actually being lost through this ever-accelerating transfer policy may, in the long run, be voters' trust in the ballot box — and their hope. And some gains are, in truth, great losses.
